City Council - Regular Meeting

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I don't think I'm We're going to go ahead and get started. Um, sorry for the technical issues we're having, but I will go ahead and call this March 2nd, 2026 meeting of the Whitefish City Council to order. Thanks everyone for attending this evening, and we do have a full council present, and thank you for those attending, uh, remotely. Just a couple housekeeping notes. We have a limited quorum scheduled for March 16th, uh, 2026,

which is our next meeting. As a result, we will not be continuing continuing our public hearing on our growth policy on March 16th. Otherwise, we will or we will be continuing the public hearing which I'll announce during that item 6B at the March 23rd, 2026 meeting. Excuse me, at the April 6th, 2026 meeting. And on March 23rd, we have a limited agenda. Uh we have one item that will be presented from our public works uh department and that will close the meeting on the 16th of May or March, excuse me. And then again we will continue the public hearing on the growth policy to the April 6th, 2026 meeting when we again expect to have a full council present. So just wanted to make that housekeeping note for those that are in attendance and watching. And we will move on to our pledge of allegiance. And I will ask John Heberling to please lead us tonight. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands nation for all. With that said, we do have one public hearing advertised for this evening, which will be our growth policy or vision whitefish community plan. I will be taking public comment during the public hearing. But if there's anything you'd like to bring to the attention of the council unrelated or related to any other items on the agenda, now would be your opportunity and just name and address, please, when you approach the podium. Mary

Good evening, Mary Flowers, Citizens for Better Flathead, 137 South Main in Callisville. Um, I wanted to uh update you on a couple of water quality issue things. Um, as you probably saw in the press this week, we chose to um file a lawsuit against Flathead County regarding their approval of the um new marina on Flathead Lake. And as the press said, we feel like the county has been not complying with the Lakeshore Protection Act, public participation act, and um that our that's a disservice to property owners and to our property rights that those rights need to be enforced. Um we have uh also on the issue that took um place on Whitefish Lake in terms of the um property where there was a blast um and uh trees were cut down. A lot of after the-act permits were issued. We have appealed filed two appeals with the county on that. They've both been denied and rejected. So, we are still looking at how do we hold the county accountable to enforcing and protecting our lakes. Um, so that is my brief update on that. I also wanted to update you on the septic issue and I talked to you at a prior council meeting that the health department has made a recommendation to weaken the standards for septic systems in the county by allowing them to again be approved as gravityfed

as opposed to what is called a pressure dosed system. Um, DEEQ in their own regulations say right up front, a pressure dose system is much more protective of our water quality. It's much more um efficient and uh but planning the health board has said, well, we want to have exceptions. They could have an exception and make it just a deviation where someone wanting that exception would really have to go the extra mile to prove that it was a proper location. But instead, what they've done is they've made it just an alternative. So, you can now come in and apply for either a gravity-fed or uh pressure dosed system. We think that's the wrong decision. We were very disappointed to see that your representative on the health board voted for that. Um, and we're pretty appalled by the reason he gave for that. So, this is decision has gone from the health department. It now goes to the um county commissioners for a public hearing and uh we'll keep you notified as to when that is coming. I will share with the council some of the background material from the health department on this um through email so that you it's all posted on the county site. It's nothing other than what uh they've done. But I think it's an issue that you as a council really need to look closely at because it would back in 2004, Joe Russell pushed this issue through the health department and got DQ approval and um county approval to put in place required pressure dose systems. this to

go back at this date with no real justification other than we just need to provide alternatives is unacceptable and I hope you will take uh issue with that and uh look into it more carefully. Thank you. Thanks very much, Mary Rhonda. I'm sorry, Richard.

Richard Hner, Fifth Street, Whitefish. Uh, just very quickly, I want to I want to encourage you to keep moving forward with all due dispatch to see what you can do to move the snow lot along and the prop uh the uh proposal put out by Habitat for Humanity. Uh, that's 22 units. that we could have probably by this time next year of home ownership uh right here in downtown beautiful downtown Whitefish. So I encourage you to keep moving on this quickly. Thank you. Deput further public comment this evening. Chris,

good evening. Chris Shustrom, 504 Spokane Avenue. Uh on behalf of Whitefish Shines and the Winter Decorations Committee, I wanted to thank the city uh for their continued partnership for this project. 76 years now. Pretty great. Um and Craig and Maria have been great and the city's always been great. So, thanks again. Let's uh why don't we do it again next year?

As long as you're around. Thanks, Chris, for all your efforts. Appreciate it. Uh further public comment this evening. Any volunteer board reports from the audience? Not seeing any. How about the council? Michelle, anyone online wishing to provide comment or volunteer board reports? Uh for those of you who are interested in addressing the council on anything that is not advertised as a public hearing, aka the growth policy, uh please raise your hand and we will call upon you. I think we're good.

Thank you, Michelle. I'll go ahead and close communications from the public and turn it back to the council. You have the February 17th meeting minutes enclosed in the packet. I would entertain a motion on the consent agenda. Mr. Mayor, I move to approve the consent agenda as presented.

Thank you, Councelor Sweeney. Is there a second? Seconded by councelor Cornell. Further discussion? All those in favor, please raise your hand. And those opposed like sign. And that motion does carry unanimously, which brings us fairly quickly onto our one and only public hearing of the evening. And I just want to remind everyone once again that I will be keeping the public comment period for this item open. Uh we will not be addressing the growth policy at the March 23rd meeting. Again, we have kind of a lack of a quorum. So, I'd like to have a full council here present on the April 6th, 2026 meeting where we will be holding a work session on the growth policy. Again, keeping the public hearing open and hopefully providing direction uh back to the city council at that time. Thank you for understanding.

John, just to correct, um you're continuing the public hearing to the 23rd for the growth policy and then it could be continued to the 6th. Thank you. Yep. Just to clarify, the 16th is no longer a growth policy meeting. It will we will have one agenda item for public works awarding a bid.

Great. Thanks for the clarification, Dana. Uh we'll move on to our one and only resolution this evening, which will be resolution 26-5 adopting the 2045 vision Whitefish Community Plan. Written public comment was received prior to publication of the packet. And just so you're aware, if you did provide public comment in writing via email, letter, what have you, it is included in the packet and part of the formal public record. So with that said, I'll turn it over to Alan, our long-term planner. Thank you.

Good. Good evening, Mayor. Am I on here? Good evening, mayor, members of the council, audience in participation. Alan Tambbach, long range planner with the city of Whitefish. So, here we are three years later and I'm going to introduce you to vision Yfish 25 2045 our community plan. I'm going to kind of do a 10,000 foot view of a 10,000 foot plan. So, what is a growth policy? Uh Michelle, move on, please. It's an official public document adopted and used by Montana cities, towns, and counties as a guide for making decisions particularly regarding land use. There's a new well what was called Senate Bill 382 now is called the Montana Land Use Plan Act. When I say M Lupa that's what I'm talking about that requires a growth poly for growth policy for any city of 5,000 people in a county of more than 70,000. There's very specific requirements from the state a growth policy or in this term I'm going to call it a community plan. It's not a regulation. It's rather it's our official policy meant to guide us and help us manage change for the benefit of the residents. Uh zoning and subdivision regulations implement the growth policy. So once the growth policy or the community plan is done, that is how it's implemented. The state now calls it used to call it a growth policy. Now it calls it a land use plan. Uh it's kind of a Montana term. Pretty much every other city in the US calls it a comprehensive plan, a master plan, or a community plan. Uh, move on, Michelle, please. So, uh, it talks about having to do a robust public process and it talks about it being on the front end. So, we had a kickoff meeting, oh, two years ago. Uh, we sent out 10,000 postcards. We put flyers in every utility bill letting them know about this community kickoff meeting. At that community kickoff meeting, I talked a lot about existing conditions and set the background of

what a growth policy is. Uh we introduced the engage whitefish site which has been our primary vehicle for anything relating to this growth policy this community plan. We've sent out 45 newsletter alerts to more than 600 subscribers. We've had six visioning sessions, three town hall meetings, 30 planning commission work sessions, I believe at least five maybe now six city council work sessions, three dedicated community housing committee work sessions on the housing element, two dedicated climate action committee work sessions on the climate change section of the environment section. Uh we've had direct input and involvement with Whitefish High School and now we actually have a leazison a Whitefish youth advisory committee that communicates directly between staff and Whitefish High School. We've published press releases before each work session and we've had about 900 pages of public comment. Move on, Michelle. So this is it. what started out as what I thought was going to be a simple consolidation turned into a 320page document. Uh there's a few different ways that we could have assembled this and the assembly can still be something that can be discussed but to make it simple what we've done at this point is that we have the basics up front. So kind of the executive summary, the planning framework and the setting kind of sets the site of what is this and where is Whitefish and what is the point of this and then there's a vision and then there's all of the plan elements and the plan elements are an introduction the goals and objectives and each goal has sort of uh some description about why those goals and those objectives exist. And then the second half of this plan is a whole lot of data. It's about 200 pages of narrative. And in general, what's

happened is that we did all the research, we put together these long essays, and then those essays drove the goals and objectives. So it was either have to have you read through all of this 30 pages of narrative to get to the goals of objectives or pull all that information, put it up at front, and then if people want more information, they can look at the back. What you haven't seen yet because we haven't created it yet is an implementation section. Uh the the only thing m lupus says is that we have to have be imple that our implementation by the date has to be looking working on the zoning and the subdivision regulations but there's a lot of action items and a lot of objectives that aren't really related to uh land use. They're more like environmental policies. So as we the the next phase of this growth policy is after we're done with this part, we're going to start working on implementation tables and and each of these plan elements will have a little implementation table of like what needs to be implemented and will it be short-term, long-term, media, and who are the agencies that'll be that'll be uh that'll be responsible. But this is ending up being a sort of a multi-phase effort. Follow me so far. So if you don't like the way that's assembled, can put it together however you want because it's already written. Uh Michelle, moving on. Okay, so planning framework and setting. So again, this is just kind of an overview of what is a community plan, what the requirements are, the relationship with our other plans. We have many other plans and policies, how the plan is organized. Um there's a general overview of public outreach. One of the things I'm working on now is a whole appendix about public participation. Won't be ready by May, but it'll be one of the things I'm finishing up. So you can go to the appendix and look at everything that played out with with the public participation. Uh there's maps in there that show the geographic settings, what the general layout of the city is, and what the planning boundary is. Michelle, one of the one of the early processes in this was visioning. And the purpose of this is we before we can even write a

grow, it's sort of like when you get to a mall or you get to a a downtown and you want to know where you want to go, you have to look at where you are. You have to look at the map and figure out where am I and where I want to go. And that is kind of what the visioning process is is we had to figure out like who are we as whitefish? What do we value? What do we want to be? How do we want to grow? What are our goals and our values? So those were those early sessions that we had. We had uh four of them. We had two or sorry six of them. We had two identical sessions early on in February of 2023 maybe. Um those were those early sessions talking about what do you like about whitefish, what do you not like about whitefish, how do you want to see white fish grow, what do you see over the next 20 years. So that's what we started with with early on and then we did more geographic uh geographically focused visioning sessions to kind of look at the different areas of the city and what were people's mental pictures of this and using that community input as well as the previous growth policy the 2007 adopted one uh we started working on a vision statement and then we brought that to the planning commission on several different times. Um, Michelle, will you go on? These are just a couple of examples. When we did online polling at our first and I spelled polling wrong, sorry. At our first visioning sessions, uh, we did some online surveys and we asked people like what they thought and these were some of the so the large words show kind of what the most people said and then kind of the the priorities of it are the smaller words. So, what makes people what makes Whitefish unique? Number one everybody said was the people which was pretty cool. Um, move on. Michelle, um, what do you valuable? What do you value about Whitefish? Again, people said people that it was friendly and walkable was one that came up a lot. How do you see Whitefish? What's important to you is is that it's walkable. Go on, Michelle. What's the biggest threat to Whitefish? And it was

affordability. And it was affordability on different things. It was the the the ability to get goods and services. It was the ability of locals to be able to eat out and especially affordable housing. Affordable housing came up over and over and over again. But that was the number one for us. Uh, next one please. What do you believe is missing in my fish again? Was affordable housing. So we what I'm trying to demonstrate here is that we had all these different exercises and we use this to form a vision statement. Move on please. So with the the way that the overall community plan is set up is there are six required plan elements of the Montana land use planning planning act and that's what I've listed here. So we started from those what are we required to do then we took the vision statement and we looked at each one of these topics and we built the vision statement. So that's the framework is we have sort of first of all a general vision statement and that general vision statement is who are we and what do we want to be as whitefish and then each of those plan element topics we had specific vision statements about how do we address that topic and then there's even more narrative under that about how we're going to do that and as we were as the planning commission and staff were working through each individual land use element uh we would craft those individual narratives. Uh, move on, please. And that's what we got here. I know it's a lot I don't unless you want me to read the whole thing, I will. But this is just a kind of a demonstration is the the top is the overall this is this is how we see white fish overall. I've I've I've gotten overall support from this. I haven't heard very much dissent on it. Um, the planning commission's helped us refine this. And then each of the themes. So land use is fostering responsible community development. Housing is encouraging a diversity of housing. So those are the themes. So if you look at the way vision wifeish 2045 is set up the actual plan the the actual community plan is set up

on this framework. Move on please. And again I'm not going to read all this to you but that's the entire vision statement with the vision themes below each plan element. Move on please. Okay. So, one of the um the things that is new with the Montana Land Use Plan Act and it's also one of the really controversial things is that we are required to pick a we're required to come up with population projections and then we have to look at how we're going to accommodate those population projections over the 20 the next 20 years. We're given very specific parameters. First thing is it says that we must use Department of Commerce based on the census. So the the the department of commerce gave us numbers and those numbers are full-time residents only. Then it says that we have three different ways that we can prepare these population projections. We can either use what's provided by the department of commerce. We can generate our own our our own populations or we can use a firm that specializes this. And we basically did I would say two and a half of this. We the the department of commerce has given us population projections. I have recently updated them. There's a website where they show what the number is and I've recently again checked them. It's more like it's like 11,000 something change to 2045. That's what the Department of Commerce is telling us. We also looked at what our average growth rate was over the last since basically 1900 and it was roughly about a one and a half percent. Now, that's not all the way true. Like 2020 was crazy, 2024 it sped up, but overall it's been about one and a half percent. Callispel is using two and a half percent, but one and a half percent has been about Whitefish population. And um we've had three different firms working with it. We've had an environmental firm, we've had a land use firm, and we've had a housing firm. And all three of them have looked at our population projections and they've said these all kind of

correlate. They make sense. Move on, please, Michelle. So again, we we looked at our current population, which the Department of Commerce or the census says is 9260. And if you look at what Mal Lupa says, it says that you have to project for the full-time and the seasonal population. And not every city has the same seasonal population. Some cities have a very small seasonal population. Some communities like Whitefish have a relatively large seasonal population. There's some different numbers. Our our seasonal population in as of late runs somewhere between 19 and 23%. But historically it has run up as about as high as 30%. That's not what it is right now. It's a little lower. But when we worked on our population projections, there was a whole lot of discussion about whether were they were too low or whether they were too high. And the the the um the direction from the planning commission was let's just look at 30%. Let's use that because that was our somewhat high seasonal population. It's better to plan a little high than to plan a little low. So based on these two different numbers that we had, we added 30%. And that came up with and you know arguing about the numbers, it could be 21 f 2800, it could be 5100, but basically we took a range of 3,000 to 5,000 people. And the reason why we did that is pretty much every scenario that we used it somehow fit right about in this range. And also on any given day, some days uh it'll the population projection from the state or the census will be up 100 and some days it'll be down 200, but it all fits within that 3,000 to 5,000. So that is full-time and seasonal population over the next 20 years accounting for a 30% uh seasonal population. And the thing I think that is important to mention in this is that if you look at our population growth from 2000 to 2020, we were roughly 6,000ish uh in 2000 and then we were like 8,000 in 2020. And if you look at those percentages, that's roughly a 50%

increase. So that 3,000 to 5,000 people, if you were to go on the high end of that is roughly a 50% increase over the next 20 years. So I ran multiple scenarios to make sure that this was going to work. Any questions on that part? I know that's that's a really riveting. So, I did the best I could. Move on, please. Okay, so these are the the plan elements. I'm going to I'm going to move pretty quickly through this and just kind of tell you what they do and whether there was whether there's any outstanding issues. Housing. Okay, move move on, please. So, we recently in as part of this growth polic this community plan, we did a a housing needs assessment. It's incorporated by reference. It ident identifies a need for 270 units over the next 20 years. If you look at what the state says, the state says that we need about 7,700 units in 2045. And I know from literally counting that we have about 5700 units now. And if you subtract 5,700 from 77, whatever that number is, it comes up with 20,71. So that is basically what the housing needs assessment used and their their um their assumptions going forward is that more housing would need to be built over the first 10 years than the last 10 years. So we've planned for 20 years but the housing needs assessment is only addressing 10 years. And part of the argument was and the same thing the state actually said is the further you go out from 10 years the more likely you are to be unaccurate. So we that we did the best we could but when we're actually planning number of units we stayed within 20 years. But we know 2071 is roughly what we anticipate over the next 20 years. The housing element uh includes some maps and those maps show what our housing is and what our distribution is and where it's at and what kind and literally how many almost down to the pretty much exactly how many we have. There's goals and objectives and there was a lot of argument about, you know, how do we need this many? Do we need that many? Depending on who you talk to, but we kept trying to pull the attention off of that because really

what this housing element does is it looks at what are the strategies to try to get more housing. We don't build housing in the city, but we can come up with financing. We can look at zoning. We can look at different strategies to try to make it easier for people or to try to facilitate or encourage housing. So, that's what the housing element does. Uh there's there's 14 required strategies under the Montana Land Use Planning Act that we're and we're supposed to meet five of them. We're presently meeting six. Um there has been some current discussion about whether we should have to meet all of them. I don't believe that made it into the housing element yet. Um although there was a policy that we should be encouraging to work towards more of them. It's important to mention that when we had a draft done early on before it even went out to the public, we met with the Whitefish the Whitefish community housing committee and then in basically three more work sessions. Uh so one was just kind of a general discussion and then two two more twohour work sessions they worked with staff to get through what they thought the goal in particular what the goal should be and we arrived at a housing element that pretty much everybody was in agreement with. So there's general agreement on the housing element itself, but there's been a tremendous amount of disagreement on whether the number of housing units that are that are mentioned are either too low or too high. But it's staff's position that the number that we are providing for is exactly what the state has told us and it matches all of our all of our historic growth rates. So far so good. Okay, Michelle. Uh okay, transportation. Okay, so there's been numerous transportation plans that have been done. Uh even most as recently is a 2025 safe streets for all plan, a 2020 Whitefish transportation plan. I believe there's nine uh and then two trails plans altogether. So that's a lot. We didn't want to kind of replicate the wheel. What we did want to do is make sure that um all of this information was all pulled in one place. That was kind of that was sort of the objective here.

So that's what we did. We we did we we presented a snapshot of the existing transportation system. We had an inventory showing what our transportation system was and what components it was designed of. And then we summarized all the existing plans. We looked at how they integrated with each other. We wrote general goals and objectives. What did all these plans kind of suggest together? And how do we holistically move forward with the transportation? That's what this does. Uh, one of the things I think it's really important, it's kind of a new way of thinking here is when we did the visioning, the the top thing when people said, "How do you see Whitefish in 20 years?" The number one response everybody says is, "We want it to be more walkable. We want it to be multimodal. We don't want to have to have a car to live here." The reason why I say that is because what this transportation system, what this transportation element does is it does not it it treats all five of the transportation components equally. And when I say that, I mean we've got we've got motorized transportation, so the road network. We've got active transportation network, so that is your pathways and your trails. Uh it looks at transit, it looks at air, and it looks at rail. And all five of those, but in particular, the the effort has been made to not try to treat trails as an amenity. We're treating trails as critical transportation infrastructure. So that is why the transportation element is separate. The only exception to that rule is that the Whitefish Trail isn't really been used as much for a transportation network. That is more of a recreational amenity. And that's why when you look in the community plan, you'll see that in parks and recreation, there's language about the Whitefish Trail, but every other trail network and pathway is addressed in the transportation element. We believe it meets all the statutory requirements. Go on, please. these maps which I don't expect you to be able to see here. Uh but these did lead to some controversy and I'll tell you why is when I went through all these different plans. Uh one of the things that I wanted to make sure happened is that all of these

future improvements and road networks were all captured in one place so that the user could look at the map and very easily go oh okay this is what's going to be designed or oh those are where some trails are going to be. So the if uh in 2022 you approved you approved a transportation plan and that transportation plan shows different new connections. So those connections were put on this map and people members of the public that were not familiar with some of our other transportation plans saw these connections and were alarmed about this and we received a ton of comments and I think that we mostly have resolved the biggest issues. Um the the one on the right is the trans is the active transportation network. So when I say active I mean trails and pathways. One of the things that's different about that I don't think it it doesn't really show up that well but there's little circles on that map. And the reason why is we recently did this 2025 straight safe streets for all plan. We wanted to make sure that when people looked at these maps, if there was an improvement that was recommended, like a pedestrian improvement, a sign, a timer, a crosswalk, they would know that some improvement was being recommended there. I originally tried to put symbols and all that, and it didn't work. It got really busy. So, instead, I put circles on those, and those circles say, "Hey, reader, uh, look at look at the safe streets for all plan." And, you know, there's a transportation transportation improvement recommended there. So, it's just kind of it's just kind of calling out that, you know, something is there. Uh, next slide please. Okay, so like I said, one one of the big issues was when is there was some alarm when people looked at the maps and they saw improvements that maybe they didn't know existed in the transportation plan and they thought we were proposing new road connections. The the big one that I think we do have have finally have been able to get resolved is there was a lot of public discussion about Columbia Avenue. Columbia Avenue has been designated as a as a collector for a very long time. Um the the connections that show the the new connections new connections to Colombia have been in

transportation plans for many years. Uh but again there was a whole lot of concern about whether or not Columbia was going to turn into a new byway. So one of the things that we we talked to Craig and one of the things that we did is that we reduced the designation of Colombia to just a local street between 7th and East Second uh right through the middle of the avenues and then the rest of it hasn't changed. And then there was also, for whatever reason, the rumor got out that we were trying to take all of the parking off of Columbia and that brought in a whole lot of people. We don't know where that came from, whether maybe somebody brought that up from the Halloween. We think maybe it would came of the Halloween party, but no, we're not trying to take all the parking off of Colombia. Um the only as we were going through, the one thing the planning commission did do that staff took exception to and it's still an issue of concern is anything regarding mixed use. So, um land use and transportation element. We tried to combine the we we tried to make sure that the land use and the transportation element um referenced each other because where you do transportation drives land use and where you do land use drives transportation. So we talked about walkability, drivability, mixeduse development. Any reference to mixed use has been taken out of the transportation element. Okay, keep going Michelle. Thank you. ENRH is environment, natural resources and hazards. I'm tired of saying that whole thing. So when you say enh that that happens to be our most comprehensive chapter. It's about 40 pages. Um these are all the different topics that are addressed in that. I'm not going to run you through all of them. Please keep going. Uh we there was uh let me see. So the the planning commission started discussions about this particular plan element in December and worked it was discussed at almost every work session until August. Water quality was the topic of the most discussion. Um there was a few red marks that that you had previously seen in regard to required studies. There was like uh tracking 303

compliance and doing producing water quality studies. Those made it into the early versions of red marks. Uh when we came to the planning commission last week, we said we still had concerns because staff doesn't do studies. We don't publish papers. We don't do federal tracking requirements. Uh the the newer planning commission removed all those requirements. So those red marks are no longer in your draft. Uh the only two outstanding things on environment now um was there's some language about designing an alternate access for big mountain road which is not our road and would require some pretty significant engineering. So that's your call. Um the second thing is that there against our recommendation there was an objective added for a moratorum on any new subdivision approvals in north and east section of the planning area if there wasn't a secondary access established within five years. Um we've already given our statement the attorney might probably be a better person to talk to if you want more information on that. Um other than that we believe all the statute there there was some comment about um early on um about whether about whether enough of the constraints maps had been uh completed. Uh we had talked about the constraints but we hadn't completed all the maps as of the time of this we had. So there's now a slope map, there's a wetland map, there's flood plane map, there's groundwater. All that stuff has now been included in your packet. Am I going too fast or not?

Okay.

All right. I do talk fast, but I think that's what you want. Okay. Economic study in September of 2023 there. So, there's very specific requirements under the Montana Land Use Planning Act about what's required for economic development. Um staff contracted with GSBS consulting. They've done several other economic studies for us uh to help us. So, they we wanted someone that was an expert to prepare the background and then we use that in the visioning sessions. um all of our other economic de development studies and our future and our and our um previous growth policies to prepare the economic development study. Uh GSBs reached out to 30 different stakeholders. They got in contact with 19 of them. They had numerous meetings one-on-one there. They they've they've published a report and they've also given us minutes from those meetings. And generally, and this is not everything, it's a it's a long report. it'll be included as part of the appendix. But in general, what this report said is that the majority of the economy is tourism based. That 76, this is a number that's debated, but this study says 76% of the people who work for Whitefish do not live here. That there is a need to diversify our economy. Uh that many visioning participants as well as stakeholders said that there need was a desire for more goods and services available to the locals. that the city should review whether zoning is too strict. Uh whether there's certain types of businesses particularly in the downtown that should be limited so one business can't proliferate to consider additional parking management strategies such as paid parking for more customer turnover. Um as this turned out go on Michelle this ended up being the topic of the most controversy. It it's been it's still uh still a topic of great controversy. Um there in when we we originally had only prepared goals and objectives, we were giving uh general direction in June of 2023 that the planning commission agreed with our goals and objectives. Then in September, we started receiving um some additional

comments that I don't agree with those objectives. In uh there was a vote taken by the planning commission to put economic development back on the agenda. So, we had to hurry up and finish the economic development element. When when we got that done, we set out on public review. We received an alternate version of the economic development element. Uh these are the ways that it varied and the planning commission voted for the alternate version that wasn't the staff version of the economic development. They adopted that. There was a lot of public controversy about that. The city council uh gave the planning commission direction to revisit that. uh the planning commission revisited and made some minor adjustments. Um but here's our staff's issues now is that there was language added to the vision statement regarding moderate economic growth and staff's concern with that was justly first of all this was an economic development study. It didn't talk about growth. We didn't use the term rapid, slow or moderate growth anywhere else in the growth policy. This was really um an effort to look at what types of businesses, how can we diversify the economy? Do we have the goods and services? Any objectives? Any mention of locally needed available goods and services have been stricken. Any objectives regarding any kind of revisions to the zoning for any additional commercial uses or mixed use have been removed. Any discussion regarding paid parking has been removed. There's about two pages of narrative regarding the benefits of tourism that were added. Staff doesn't necessarily disagree with that. staff's concern was that we wrote a neutral plan element and there was about two pages that were that were favorable to tourism. And again, we're not arguing that it's the favorable to the economy. It's the city council's decision if they want it to be a a pro- tourism economic development element. Um there was several paragraphs added about the impacts of short-term rentals on the economy, and we certainly agree that there are impacts of short-term rentals. Um but we have not seen the research about the actual economic impacts other than maybe a few

select businesses and that was not what was expressed in the GPS report. So that is what we used uh as our vehicle to prepare this. Um there was removal of any language discussing that there was a loss of locally serving businesses over the last few years. Although there was a paragraph added about all the businesses that are now in rightfish. Um there was then there was also there was when in the original economic development element we listed what all the findings were of the GSBS report and some of those findings were straight were stricken. Um other than that though with with all this we believe we meet the statutory requirements although these are discussion items for you. I think it's important to mention that this is I as you I'm sure you are aware this has been uh probably the topic of the of some of the most tremendous discussion throughout this. Um the the planning commission which I'll come back to uh got did the best that they could but they couldn't reach agreement on this and at their most recent meeting they said we're going to let the council decide. Okay. Public facilities last one. Uh move please. Okay, so um these are the contents of the public facility section. This really is more of an engineering section and capacities and deficiencies. We had to look at what our public facilities are and were they capable of serving the um existing in the projected population over the next 20 years. What I've listed here is all that is listed in that 40page uh document. Move on, please. This is not everything. I I'm just kind of pointing out the bigger things to you. But if we were ju if we are to grow by 3,000 to 5,000 people. So if you want to use slow rap moderate growth or rapid growth, it would be 3,000 or 5,000 I guess or slow growth or moderate growth. Um, if we were to grow by that number

over the next 20 years, public works is going to need environmental analysis and a facilities plan because they need to expand their facility and it's on a present landfill and they don't know what the environmental issues are right now on that landfill. So, they don't know if they can expand or build new buildings because they don't know what what they're built on top of. When the population gets to 10,000 people, by federal law, we're required to get a new storm water permit. And that's going to require a storm water utility and lengthy and lengthy staff. It's coordination and more staff. Uh the existing water facility will need a new water storage facility. That's in process. As you already know, it's getting built over at the public works yard. Uh the city should consider establishing groundwater sources for additional supplies. That's because as climate change, fire, etc. comes over the next years. uh service water is going to be more and more difficult whether it's from drought or from pollution from any various service sources including solar from fire that there's a possibility we need to start looking at more groundwater sources. Um the wastewater system needs pump improvements. There's uh water main sizing needed in three areas. Replacements of clay pipes downtown. We as part of this process we updated the water and the wastewater master plans. That's where all this information came from. I had the fun task of reviewing all these and trying to figure out what they said and then I mapped them which which if you look in the um the public facility section you'll see that there are now maps that show what are the improvements are under existing conditions and what would the improvements need to be over future conditions. Uh the fire department will need a new station north of the vioaduct parks and wreck will need a new master plan updated. Uh there was some discussion from the last plan carried over, a great recommendation about an open space designation and acquisition strategic plan. Uh there is also going to be a new rec center and a second maintenance shop required on the north side. Um one of the discoveries was that the city cemetery is full. So we have to start finding more land because I don't

think we can stack them. And the joke was that's probably not mixed use. Um so we need to start figuring out what we're going to do about more cemetery space. Uh the library right behind us has a little city land a little there is a some city-owned land behind the library. Uh they are looking at expanding. Um so they're they're working through whether or not that can happen. Um the ice needs a new rough. So with that staff believes that that element meets all the statutory requirements as well. There's a lot in there. Um next please. Okay. Land use. So another very complex one that we wanted to get some assistance on. Um, so we hired CZB LLC, who you are now very familiar with, to work on this. And I've I'll blow through this pretty quick because you just went through this, but I'm going to do this for the public that was not at the work session. There were three open houses spelled specifically for land use. We had about 240 people attend. We had two online servicees, about 300 people. So we've had about 550 people that have been involved in the land use visioning. And then there was key themes. Can move on, Michelle? where we landed is what we're calling place types and it's similar to a land use map. Uh the difference is we're focusing less on use and we're focusing more on form. And when I say form, I mean instead of saying um form is like how does the building look? How does it lay on the lot? What's the size of the building? Um ho how does it relate to the streetscape? So so we're looking more at that. So a place is a geographic categoration describes the intended character, form and function of an area. It's not a zoning map. And the reason why we did this is because if you recall the Montana land use planning act, one of the biggies is at the end everything has to be an administrative process. So right now under current well what was under current Montana law when there's like an apartment complex or a warehouse the city council had the ability to have that come as a conditional use in front of the planning commission and then

ultimately the city council and the city council could go through listen to that and make additional directions. We're no longer allowed to do that under Montana law. It has to be done administratively. In order to do that, we have to have clear parameters about how do we want the city to look and how do we want the city to function so that there's more predictability so that the citizens know what's going to get built and so that the development industry knows that what's going to get built. So, we're trying to move towards more what's called a formbbased code. Can you move on, Michelle? So, the the place type descriptions, I know you can't read these, but um there was a comment about these being whitefish specific, and they will be. We just haven't gotten those yet. But the the pictures will look more reminiscent of white fish specific things. It talks about like some of the general land uses and then it talks about like uh build twos or how the building sits or how high the building is. And then there's a description about what does that area actually look like? What is the character of that neighborhood? How does it feel? So there's more in that kind of character thing in this. Could you move on please? And then there's a future place type map and that functions somewhat like a land use map. It it talks about that there's um I think 17 different place types and each of those place types is somewhere distributed on this map and then this and then when this is done zoning will be crafted to match this map and zoning is the way that this place type map is implemented. Could you move on please? There's a whole lot of discussion about this one. 350 pages of public comment and counting. Um, here's the bigger issues that have been discussed is that there's an area west of Spokane, south of East Third, which was originally shown as Heritage Urban Neighborhood. That's the same place type is what is what we call the avenues, which is our historic residential area. That's where we started. Then we changed that after the town halls, it was discovered that that area that I just referred to was

actually zoned for multif family and that the most recent master the downtown master plan recommended for multif family. We thought well that's not really the same zoning or the same designated land uses and there's actually more of a smattering of commercials in this area. So, there was a new heritage downtown neighborhood that was written um that caused a hu and and that place type the the the multi right now it's allowed to have 18 dwelling units per lot without a conditional use in that area. This new place type allowed single family duplex and up to six. So, it was actually a lesser density recommendation. There was huge community input about that and the planning commission gave staff the direction to change it back to heritage urban neighborhood. Now, uh I believe that it recommends uh fourplexes at the highest of the density. Um it's important to mention that Mountain View neighbor Mountain View Manor was carved out separately as a separately as a separate distinct land use within that. So that's the big first big area of controversy, Michelle. Okay. Second big area of disagreement was land use area B. And what I've shown you here, I it's too hard to see on the place type maps, but Park Null is just to the north. So what I highlighted was the three areas that are place type B. And then there's a riperian corridor or wet line, but it's more of a riparian corridor that runs almost directly through the middle. So that place type allows single family, duplex, small, multif family, and neighborhood commercial. There was a lot of community concerns about density, particularly there was some confusion about whether commercial uses were going to build through throughout this area and whether or not there was going to be building on the wetland. Uh obviously there, you know, even even if staff wanted even if somebody wanted to build on the wetland, there's a lot of federal protection. So that was never something that we were envisioning. We did want to make sure though that there was a little more definition about what was going to

happen. So it's been changed. The place type now shows compact suburban to the west. So on the other side of a wet land is basically only residential. And then on the east side is mixed neighborhood. So that's a mix of housing. And it does say that you could allow some small commercial uses directly adjacent to 93 or adjacent immediately uh adjacent to Baker. And right now immediately adjacent to 93 now already is a car dealership in a church. So, you know, if those uses were to turn around in the next 20 years, you know, that's what we're looking at in the future. Um, okay, move on, please. Okay, so there was uh we received quite a bit of correspondence from Crandle Ormbula and they had what they called the mobility oriented downtown plan and the the theme has been areas within one mile radius of the downtown should be upzoned. Um most everybody has agreed with the statement. The problem we've run into is there's been almost lots of disagreement about which areas within this one mile area should actually be upzoned. Um again Crownorula gave us this mobility oriented downtown plan and they gave us a few different graphics. This one is showing different parcels that could be used for future housing. Um we certainly don't disagree with any of this. We agree that there should be more that that the downtowns are the appropriate places for housing. Um we also agree that there are plenty of lots that could be an opportunity for a new housing. Um what we don't agree with is that this level of specificity does not belong in a community plan. Uh this is a master plan, a a specific plan, a downtown plan. Um you wouldn't see this kind of getting in the weeds in any community plan. there there is a different level of specificity we think is a little more appropriate if you move on to the next slide. So rather than specifying specific properties just within the downtown and the community

plan, the planning commission looked at it a little more holistically um shelter WF had originally started with this recommendation where they were showing what kind of housing types would be more appropriate in these place types. This is the way we would recommend for a community plan is is rather than looking at individual parcels, which again is a good idea and could be done with a housing plan, a strategic plan, a downtown plan, a corridor plan for a community plan if if you're looking more holistically at a 10,000 view. So the the planning commission added some additional gentle density areas. Um let's I I think if you move on to the next slide, I think I described that. Um Oh, no. Okay, back up. I don't know if you can back up. Where they where they ended up in was um in suburban areas they let me see if I can remember this. In suburban they recommended triplexes and then in urban edge place types they recommended triplexes. Um also in the mixed neighborhood it was originally 18 dwelling units per lot and the planning commission increased that to 25 dwelling units per lot. So basically they looked at at several place types in and around their downtown within that one mile area and they did some gentle increase in density rather than just focusing on specific parcels. So that's a more common strategy for a 10,000 ft document like a community plan and we believe that's consistent with the housing vision statement which talks about encouraging a larger diversity in housing types and density throughout the city. And you've, you know, heard it said a lot that um no neighborhood should be exempt from change and no neighborhood should experience rapid change. So distributing it equally throughout the city for us we think is maybe a more gentle way to increase density. Although we do 100% agree that downtown is a very appropriate place for density. Okay, move on. This has been a continuing discussion item um since I

think two September of 2023 and whether or not any commercial development should be allowed outside of downtown. We've received a significant amount of public comment for and against um I think you already know all a lot of the arguments. Um there's been a firm that's been hired that I know has been arguing against this. I'm sure you'll hear from them this evening. So, I'll leave it at that. Um next slide. Okay. So, there were two hearings held by the planning commission. One on February 9th, one on February 23rd. On the 19th, um they just heard public comment. 19 people were testifying. The majority of it was regarding housing being within one mile of downtown. Uh whether or not mixeduse was appropriate and whether the area west of Spokane that I had talked about should be more or less dense place types. There was also has been but especially at this meeting a lot of comments about population numbers too low too high. Um public comment was closed and continued to February 23rd. The the PV the PC made changes to the place types like I had mentioned. They made several other edits to the land use element such as allowing triplexes and forplexes. Um they removed language from the ENR that uh we talked about about with studies and federal tracking requirements. Um keep going please. Okay. So the planning commission voted six to one to recommend adoption of this plan. Uh the dent noted that although they agreed with most of the plan just on on principles they couldn't vote on it because of the way the public process had occurred with economic development. Uh there were two other commissioners that noted they also had reservations on voting uh for the same reason uh but they didn't want to stop the process. They wanted the process to keep going. So they they they voted but the three commissioners asked me to bring to you their concerns about how the economic development uh and in general the public

process but particularly I believe but I don't want to speak for them um how the economic development uh was adopted. Um keep going please. So staff recommends that the uh recommends that the council makes the determination that the plan elements meet all statutory requirements of M loopa. And I've gone through that in the staff report and told you how they do. And after consideration of public comment, uh staff recommends that you consider the recommendations of the planning commission and then adopt Whitefish 2045 with any additional revisions or additions. And with that, I'm concluded my presentation.

Alan, thanks very much. Great job. I I very very much appreciate the applause because it's been a long and painful sleepless now now on blood pressure medication process. Uh real real quick any questions for Allan. Uh Rebecca Alan I thought originally M Lupa only required five five things to be complied with. That's right. Oh but now we're up to six and we're going to get more. We're meeting six and um there was recommendations to the housing committee that we should meet more. Okay. So, we're already meeting the minimum. You're an overachiever is what you're saying. No, you would be overachievers.

Additional questions for Alan. Thanks very much, Alan. Appreciate it and all your effort for the last three years. Uh with that said, I we did advertise for a public hearing on resolution 26-5 and we will hold that public hearing now. how it has been advertised. I've had two requests for compressed presentations from shelter whitefish as well as heart of whitefish and I'll entertain those two uh presentations now. And I would ask and request that you limit your comments to less than 10 minutes or no more than 10 minutes. And why don't we start with Don Aramula uh representing the heart of Whitefish. Don and then Keegan you'll be next. Nice to see our graphics in the presentation. That's great. Um, I just wanted to address really quickly two things. One is uh housing. I don't want to get in the weeds on that, but my main interest for the heart of Whitefish is talking about the mixed use requirements and I'll get into more detail on that. Uh clarification on the mod, the the mobility oriented downtown that we provided, it didn't recommend upzoning. It was recommended infill at current zoning. The other thing is uh when we talked about it uh we did it to identify policy for you to move forward for housing. Uh what we felt is that we looked at your growth strategy and it's a donut frankly. You've got a lot of development around the edges, but there was a lack of a number that said this is what we'd like to see in the downtown in terms of the number of units. And it was

a back of the envelope look at public parcels in particular to say the city has a particular role in addressing affordability. And the biggest constraint in that affordability issue is land costs. and you have tools like your resort tax to provide um any kind of subsidy to to make those happen. Likewise, there's lots of things in the downtown specific plan, the downtown um uh district um um master plan that call out for improvements that haven't been realized like a parking structure and other uses that I think could be cobbled together. And we agree that policy doesn't uh uh have the specivity that we talked about in that presentation, but we do think we need to have those specific actions to update the the downtown plan, to do a housing study, all the things that Ellen uh pointed out that needs to be in your growth policy to give you direction to do that and deal with the downtown specifically. The other thing that was missing here is this linkage to walking and biking infrastructure. You can get housing, but if you can't deal with the cost of living somewhere by eliminating car use, because many families it's 5,000 a year, that can pay for a mortgage. So we think that if you do any growth strategy that has to have specific recommendations for ped and bike improvements. The downtown plan talks about a prominade on Spokane. That should be the backbone component of that. And finally I just want to reemphasize that you can't build your way out of this with density. The what is lacking in the analysis is to say if you upzoned for example the heritage district what is the net number

of units that you're going to get out of that upzone I charge that is very few so you're going to disrupt a lot of neighborhoods by getting a handful of housing units a better approach is to identify sites and build baby build on those sites by the city instead of trying to do it with the hope and the prayer that the private sector will do it because we've seen it before when this private sector builds they build at market rate. They're looking for profit. The city is not doing that. So you can have deed restrictions whatever you want. Okay, enough of that. And what I want to do is really specifically is talk about mixed use. Um, what I need to remind everybody when we talk about retail, it is the hardest use to get right. We work around the country and we know lots of people randomly throw it out. So, what we've heard in the process is a lot of hope and prayers and a lot of desire. There's nothing wrong with that to say we would like to see neighborhoods serving retail. Great policy. Great big cities often have neighborhood centers. You're a city of less than 8,000 people full-time, maybe grows to 12, 13,000. You don't have enough population and your market area isn't big enough stretching down to to Callispel to support a lot of retail. The reality is you have not done a retail study. You haven't done the market analysis that identifies what's the potential, what's the for for demand, what is the supply and how far is going to be, what's going to take to absorb that. You've done all of that for housing, but somehow magically you think that you're going to get retail without the data to pack it up. A datadriven process has a market

analysis. And I would say at a minimum you should table any uh recommendations for retail until you do a detailed market analysis that says there is a market for additional retail in Whitefish. What we do know is your downtown is struggling. You've got almost 100,000 square feet of underdeveloped land vacant parcels. So, and what we do know is your downtown is the local serving destination for people in this community. Somehow there's this belief that it's tourist serving only. It is not. There's almost a 100 businesses. And so, we say make it easier for the community to get downtown and provide more housing in the downtown where people really want to work and live. not out on the perimeter, not on a a parcel where you're going to increase traffic volume. So, let's talk about some of the recommendations we have. And I think you've got in the handout because I want to be pretty direct about this. What we think for for um the location C is yes there is a need and there is by right today in the WB2 to do corridor commercial retail along that leave it as it is. break that location C into generally two areas. The old hospital site, allow that to as is to have the commercial uses there and um then south of Glenwood where the mall is, leave that corridor commercial today. Anything that you're doing with your place type for neighborhood center is in fact is a downzoning. You talked about putting some um some guard rails to the amount of commercial you have there. you have well over 100,000 square feet today. The guard rails will limit that mount. And I guarantee you if

you've had discussions with the mall, you've got two major uses there. You've got the grocery store and the sporting goods store. Those combined are well over 100,000. So if you do the math, what they're talking about, 20% required and maximum footprints, those are now non-conforming uses if you make that part of your zoning code. So that's dead on arrival. The other issue is when we talk about neighborhoods serving retail, this is what we call um experiential retail. So the coffee shops, the little cafes, all the things that they identified, there's not a big market for that. So if you look at all the shopping trips people make in the community, that's about 12% of those trips. And downtown is depending on that 12%. So, you're going to cut that pie into smaller and smaller pieces. And so, our fear is not that we don't want to see people have uh access to those goods and services to the downtown, but it's the death by a thousand cuts. Downtowns don't die all at once. It takes years. What you don't want to be is sitting here in 2035 and saying, "What happened to the downtown?" And so, it's a a cautionary tale. Don't do it until you have a sense that all of this can work. So I say travel, tread lightly on anything that impacts your downtown because in the goals and objective it is in your economic element is said is the economic heart of the community. You have goals and objectives and your land you said talk about grow inward. There is as I mentioned before a donut that talks about this. So you got to get all these things tied together in a package that we think makes some sense. So we do not want to see a neighborhood center as a new place type. Get rid of it. Replace it as I mentioned for the

community corridor and compact suburban areas out back behind that can take advantage of the the river. That is really where you're going to have the opportunity to do this missing middle housing. That is a great place to do it. And by the way, as identified in that area, if you make the pedestrian improvements, you're within a mile and a five minute bicycle ride to your downtown core in the retail. The other thing to point out in that place type C, you've got the things that are weekly destinations across the street. You've got a grocery store, you got the Super A, you've got um the the the um the uh the pharmacy. I'm forgetting which one it is, but the the write a and so those are already there. The destinations are already built in. And by the way, in the mall, you've got a lot of I call them incubator uses, uses that are in a dead entire uh mall because they can't afford to be in a new development. Because what we do know from our experience is that when you do mixed use, it's going to demand higher rents and higher lease rates. And our sense is that if you want to neuter local uses, you're not going to get them there because the rents and the money isn't going to play out for you. So, so we'd like to see that uh that just taken out, preserve the mall as it is, work on a plan to revitalize that. There's lots of examples around the country how to do that as well. Um so, uh it's in your document here in the map. you can see what we're saying for spec specifics of that place type. I'm going to move on then to um location B, the southern end.

Let's try to wrap up in a minute here, D.

And I I just want to just hit really quickly what we suggest for that map is that um the area along the the the 93 corridor is currently WB2 that allows commercial. leave that as community corridor for those parcels and and and then change all those back to the sub uh compact suburban neighborhood that's on the back. And I think that's generally what we want to see. And then finally, north of the the the railroad tracks where you've got some of the existing historic uh retail uses, make those grandfathered in and then really emphasis on housing in those neighborhood, not expansion of any more retail. It's there. It's an asset, but we need housing, not more retail. So, call it a residential place type. And I think it's up to staff to figure out what that should be. Thank you. Yeah,

thanks very much, Don Keegan.

Hello, Keegan Sebanoler, 306 Love Avenue. Um, on those handouts, they printed bottom to top, so don't be uh don't be confused by that on the copies for council. Um I'm speaking tonight is the executive director of Shelter WF uh 306 for Avenue. Um so you can move on to slide two. We hired um Embold Research. They're a nonpartisan public opinion research firm that launched in 2021 and they've worked with local governments and advocacy organizations. Um you'll see there that they're the nonprofit unit of change research which I assume some of you have heard of. Um you can move on to the next slide. So, um, Livable Flathead and ShelterWF, um, commissioned this poll. I did want to briefly talk about why, um, throughout the growth policy meeting, we've had this big battle over where the community is on housing development. And that battle by this point is pretty predictable. Um, shelter WF activates our membership. We get 15 people to show up, make comment. Another group activates their membership, get 15 people to show up. We write a form letter, they write a form letter. Um, but obviously on both sides, this debate activates a pretty small group of people and they're all in the room tonight. What ShelterWF has always kind of said is that that this room just structurally isn't representative. Um, the people that are activated for public comment is a very skewed sample and um, consistently that public comment is both hyper local and skewed against housing growth. So, we commissioned the survey because we wanted to put that to the test. um that theory that there's more support in the broader community um than there is in public comment for kind of the broad suite of ideas that we try to put forth. Um so that was the goal behind this survey. Um I'll get into the methodology very quickly. I did want to note that Trenton Marlor from Embold Research, he was online for the work session. wasn't able to stay online um for questions from council, but if you do have any um or if anyone else does, I would direct them over email. Um that's at the back of the presentation um and

he's happy to answer. Um I'm not a polling expert. I can answer anything that is covered in a college statistics class, but nothing beyond that. Um they surveyed 615 registered voters in Flathead County between February 20th and 25th um with 26 questions that we put together. Um and so everyone was directed to the same online survey and then they apply weights to make sure it's representative. Um so they ask questions about gender and age and um political status and then weight it based on the 2024 election results so that you can get um a representative sample. And in the end, the margin of error was 4% for um all of Flat County. So this was all flat county residents. Um but we also did ask people where they lived within the county um in each of the cities or outside of any incorporated city. And so we also did get a sample just for whitefish. Obviously that's a smaller sample and so the modeled margin of error for just whitefish rises to about 12%. Um, we still think that these results are important enough to present to council, especially because there weren't many questions where there was much variation at all between responses. Um, there were a few and I'll point those out, but broadly the um the difference between cities was not that significant and um presented a pretty coherent overall um sample. You can move on to the next slide. Um, so you can just see the demographic, geographic, and partisan characteristics here. I won't spend too much time on that, but it should align with your overall um, idea of the electorate. Pretty wide range in ages as well as incomes, um, location. And then if you move on to the next slide, this is just for the white fish whitefish portion of the sample. Again, quite similar to the overall sample. The one that changes is political affiliation flips to about 50% democratic from like 25% for the overall county. Okay, you can move on to the next one. And this is just the overall findings from the poll.

Um, our key takeaway is that voters are pretty deeply concerned about housing affordability and broadly support moving forward with solutions that do expand housing options throughout the city. So, the most important results here, I'll get into them more, but seven and 10 voters say that the county does not have enough housing options to meet needs of all residents. Um, seven and 10 voters say that cities should prioritize redeveloping existing land within cities rather than developing open space outside of city limits. Voters overwhelmingly prioritize building more homes to reduce costs. 64% choose this approach over protecting neighborhood character. And a majority of voters, 54%, think cities should allow up to four small homes per lot in all residential neighborhoods except for the more rural areas on the edge of town. So um I'll get into some specific results and at the end of this presentation we have the entire poll book linked with the specific wording of every single question we asked. So please do take a look at that at your leisure. Um the first result is about whether Flathead Valley overall has housing options. So the countywide split is 67% saying there's not enough, 20 21% saying there is enough. in Whitefish that rises to um nine out of every 10 residents or eight out of 10 saying that there's not enough housing options and one out of 10 saying that there are enough. Okay, you can move on to the next slide. So, this slide looks at whether people have been personally affected by the shortage of affordable housing um or they know someone who has. And so, you can see pretty consistent results here, but um around a third of residents have been directly affected by a shortage of affordable housing. Um and then another 45% have been know someone who has been directly affected. Um you can move on to the next slide. So in addition to our quantitative data, we left a few questions open-ended. Um and the first was just asking people who answered yes to the previous question how exactly it impacted them. Um so in total we got 354 of these narrative

responses. This is obviously just a small sample of those. I highly recommend that over the next few days you take a look at all of those responses. When you start reading hundreds of them in a row, it's genuinely hard to read through. You get a sense of the stress of housing insecurity and really the stress of that uncertainty that it causes. I do think that the growth policy has a tremendous potential to affect the people by creating more housing options. Okay, next slide. Um to get a bit more detail on how housing costs are impacting residents, um we asked if they made it more difficult or made it difficult for them to envision a long-term future in the Flathead Valley. Um you'll see that 78% of people under 35 said that it did, as well as 76% of renters, um which are pretty significant numbers when we think about kind of how the Flathead Valley will grow over the next 20 years. Can move on to the next slide. So, building on those concerns about affordability, we asked voters which priority they think the city should have. Um, creating more homes to reduce housing costs or protecting neighborhood character. We've had a lot of discussion about neighborhood character here in Whitefish. And um, even here in Whitefish, 66% of voters say that they should focus more on creating more housing options that regular people can afford than limiting the creation of new housing to protect neighborhood character. Can move on to the next slide. So, in addition to an overall desire to increase housing options, we also tested support for specific updates that will come through zoning, the top three items focus on housing changes more broadly, including allowing four and eight homes on a property in certain areas. Um, so you can see support was higher for four homes than eight. And then also limiting the size of a single detached house, um, but allowing multiple homes to add up to more housing. So we think of that third question as adjusting lot coverage ratios to be higher for higher density developments and that had support as well. Across these items, each proposed housing change received more majority

support. Um and then the bottom four items are particular to developments that include deed restricted affordable housing. Um so we put together these incentives of allowing more homes on a lot, allowing greater living space, allowing one to two stories of additional height, and allowing more flexibility in building materials and landscaping. In White Fish, we have a legacy homes program. I think it's clear that we're going to need to take a look at those incentives after May. And um this indicates that there's majority support for really strengthening those incentives, allowing, you know, an extra story or two of height as opposed to just the 5T that is currently allowed. Okay, you can move on to the next slide. I think this is the most actionable uh slide for today's meeting. um which is this question about allowing four small homes to share a property in all residential neighborhoods except for the most rural areas on the edge of town. Um this is a recommendation that shelter WF made in the written comment and the support for that proposal was actually highest in Whitefish with twothirds support and um we think that these poll results connect the significant and urgent problem of housing costs across the valley to solutions that are under represented under reppresented in these community meetings. And um we also think that allowing missing middle housing types like this across the city is the only equitable solution. A lot of people will be upset if their neighborhood is the only one that is upzoned. The way we minimize impact on any particular neighbor is by distributing growth across the city and allowing it to happen gradually. More broadly, I just want to point out that we talk about building affordable housing. Um, like saying we want to manufacture more used cars. Affordability is something that happens over time in a well functioning market and we put a lot of pressure on a brand new market rate unit right now to be affordable. not what that unit can open up in other parts of the housing market either now or 10 15 20 years down the line as time goes on and that unit becomes less desirable. So that um is written in our packet and I hope you'll

consider our recommendations. You can move on to the next slide. Um the full poll results are there. You can look at the Qi QR code or click that link. Um, and then you can also get in touch with Trenton Marlor if you have any questions about the methodology, um, the polling error or any questions like that. And I thank you for your time.

Thanks very much, Keegan, and thanks for the work from Shelter Whitefish. Much appreciated. We'll move on to general public comments this evening. And just as a reminder, we will again be holding the public hearing open for comment at the March 23rd meeting as well as the April 6th meeting of the White Fish City Council, which will also include a work session on the growth policy. So, I please ask that you limit your comments this evening to three minutes. Thank you.

All right. Uh, mayor and city council, I'm Mallerie Phillips, 937 Callispell Avenue. Um over the last three years, both as a member of the public and as a board member of the planning commission, I have seen a generational divide in the sticking points within this document. It's extremely important to name the generational divide. Uh in order to understand how this document will be used and who at the end of all of this will most benefit from it. On one side are the people calling for preserve and protect. They are mostly over 50, largely homeowners, a mix of long-term and new residents, and they're the ones that show up every single week. On the other side are people under 50, far less likely to own homes, often those those feeling the housing crisis most acutely. They show up when they can, especially at the big visioning sessions, and they're the ones that are pushing for infill, mixeduse, economic diversity, and incremental change. I am part of that generational divide. As a 34year-old making less than $45,000 a year who has watched my community of peers being pushed out, this is very personal to me. I can continue to hear my peers, working-class community members ask for more choices and where and how they live. Right now, if they can afford to live in Whitefish, the two options are largely overcrowded single family homes with many roommates that are still stretched thin um with their budgets or living in large apartments. very little choices on how housing um in between exists. Apartments are part of the solution, but they cannot be the only solution. Without legalizing missing middle housing, we are left with a binary. Large single family homes few locals can afford or large apartment buildings that concentrate density in limited areas. The current binary of expensive single family homes or large apartment buildings is insufficient. I urge you to amend the place types to allow at the very least forplexes and town homes by right within one mile of downtown. Without legalizing this missing middle housing, we reinforce a

status quo that excludes the working class, young families, and those on fixed incomes. When locals can't afford housing here, they don't just move neighborhoods. They are forced to leave Whitefish entirely. Your choices read the growth policy will either cement a path of unaffordability or more move us towards a future where more people of different economic backgrounds have more choices in how and where they live, work, and socialize. In this policy, if this policy remains a tool to protect well-resourced neighborhoods while pushing density to the outskirts and workingclass areas, it is merely performative. For truly equitable growth, no neighborhood should experience rapid change and no neighborhood should be exempt from change. Finally, I encourage you to put mixed use back in the economic development and transportation chapters. I also ask that you closely look at the economic development chapter. Um, Whitefish is an extremely hard place to live on the current local service industry wages. ensuring that this chapter is representative of the conditions on the ground and recognize the importance for economic mobility and economic diversity. I ask that you look at the original staff staff draft version of the economic development chapter and undo much of the red lines. Whitefish will grow. The question is whether the growth distributes opportunity equitably or continues to benefit only a few. Thank you.

Thanks, Mallerie. Appreciate you sticking to three minutes, Nathan. I'll try to do even better than three minutes. Nathan Dugan, executive director of Livable Flathead, 121 Wisconsin Avenue. Um I just want to follow up Keegan's presentation. He did a much better job than me um down in Callispel. Um, one of the other questions that we asked, and it's been a kind of a topic, um, of discussion for the last three years throughout this whole thing, um, is we asked people whether they support or oppose allowing small businesses like corner stores, restaurants, coffee shops, andies in most places within our cities with some constraints, which could create additional small business opportunities and more vibrant neighborhoods. And so this has gotten turned into mixed use and retail and all of this stuff. But really like all anybody wanted was was corner stores, bodegas, restaurants, coffee shops. And so like that is a specific question. Uh that across the valley including in Whitefish is like an 80 84 85% support uh 8 to 11% oppose issue. Um, and so I guess I'll just remind you all that even though the sample size on whitefish may be smaller, um, and the margin of error is is slightly higher, a little bit higher than that 4%. Um, we sampled a lot of people that do not come to these meetings. They're younger, they're lower income, they're more likely to be renters than the people that come to these meetings. Um, and I think that that is an important thing to to kind of consider. I think I sent you all um the email when I dropped this this afternoon. Uh and there was a link to a Medium article in there that I wrote that's uh 15 or 20 minutes to read that goes into all of the the poll results and um a lot more narrative detail. And so I would encourage you all to take a look at that when you get a chance. Thanks.

Thanks, Nathan. Who's next? Cameron

Cameron Blake 825 Lexand Trail in Whitefish and I'm speaking on the housing. I know it's been mentioned that the biggest threat and it was right up there in bold letters to Whitefish is affordable housing and it's so important that we do things to address that. The market has not provided a solution. We've seen that. We need to put things into place within zoning, within land use to specifically allow for affordable housing. The city needs to step up and do things or it's not going to happen. As well, um the housing needs analysis showed that what we really need are affordable rentals in that less than 80% AMI and ownership opportunities for that 80 to 200% AMI. Um again, that's not going to happen from the market. It needs to be supported, subsidized at some level. edus and duplexes in my have not provided a solution because they're creating a more expensive property. Um it's an investor property to buy a house with an ADU on it costs even more. So what about in splitting off allowing smaller lots so we can split off that ADU? Um yes triplexes but can they be condoed? So again ownership opportunities for that entry level. We need to make sure that as we move forward with zoning that it provides those opportunities. Um, I love the idea of infill within a mile of downtown. Again, those tools need to be in place. You know, there used to be 25 foot and there are some 25 foot wide lots in part of the old downtown. Let's see more of those. Um, town houses, that's great. How many town houses can we put in in one spot? Um, you know, I keep hearing triplexes, forplexes. Does that mean there could be three town houses? Again, that needs to be explored. um gentle density and going forward as it's been mentioned the legacy homes really needs to kind of pick up where this leaves off and provide incentives for affordability. Um it's going to take you know as mentioned also developers are looking

for a profit. So, as I said before, it's going to take the city stepping up and investing um providing both investment in the form of dollars, you know, maybe looking at increasing the tax resort um resort tax by well that 1% um solutions and guidance. You know, I I've talked about that in housing committee that with all the needs and the lower affordable rental, there really needs to be some guidance exploring LITC, exploring these other things. It's not going to happen without a push to do that. And I think that's what I have to say. Oh, just one other thing just on the I did really like the idea of annexation. You know, the CCNRs can limit what we can do in neighborhoods. There's providing more of those big lots. So, let's, you know, look at if we're annexing and where we can limit the CCNRs that that don't allow some of these options that provide more density. Thank you.

Thanks, Cameron. Who's next? Hi, I'm Carolyn Pitman. I live at One Tides Way. I've been a resident for almost 50 years, so I do have um I have a perspective and that is that this has been a great place to live. Um I've raised my kids here and I recognize, as I've said before, if we moved here today, we wouldn't be able to buy a house here. So my concern is the affordability, the affordability for our children and for our grandchildren. However, um since the Mountain Gateway project when I became involved with the housing committee and um other areas of housing, I um I recognized that development and um mass massive building does not create affordability, especially in a resort community. and any article that I've read, unless it's built for affordability, it's not going to make it affordable. And I think we have an opportunity here. I've seen enough collaboration between the city and nonprofits and philanthropy to make a lot of wonderful things happen in Whitefish. And I think we can make affordability happen. The city has land, we have nonprofits, we have an incredible philanthropic community raising millions of dollars. Why can't we utilize that? Why can't we make that a priority for affordability? Thank you.

Thanks, Carolyn. Kate.

Um, hi. Thank you, Kate McMahon, 151 Wedgewood Lane. Um, I just sort of like to echo what the last speaker said. as a um I'm a retired city planner, but um when I was consulting, I probably did 10 housing needs assessments across the state of Montana. And the most effective way to build affordable housing was through partnerships, land banking, tax credits. Um I did zoning reform in Helena 15 years ago where we did general density then went back again after 10 years and they had like five units that people voluntarily built u because they were building for the market. Um so I agree um with forming the partnerships. Um, I also have some concern with the um I guess um public process and some of the um parts that weren't completed for planning board before it got here. So, I'm really glad to hear that you're going to extend the public proc um public hearing process for the next two weeks. Um and hopefully some of these pieces that I think that are not missing that are required by the MCA maybe can be produced in that time. Um I did point out um at the last uh work session that there were some maps that were missing and staff was able to um insert those. Um one of the big pieces I think um that is lacking is the implementation section. Um Allan said that the MCA did not require that except for the land use section. And I'm actually looking at Malupa on my computer. Section 76-25216 implementation says that an imple that the land use plan which is comprised of all six components transportation housing and everything um is um must include an implementation section that um and it talks about the land drafting land use regulations and future land use

maps but um section C says that requires the identification of those programs activities ities, actions or land use regulations that may be part of the overall strategy of the jurisdiction for implementing the land use plan. The land use plan is all six section and it says it must include an implementation plan that includes those activities, actions um and and other um other strategies. Um, so I think all of the elements, um, you have a table of contents that says that there's going to be, uh, implementation strategies for those sections and the only one that includes it is the land use element. Um, so I I think that this does not comply with the MCA requirements until you have an implementation section for all six elements. I came across this problem when I was reviewing the natural resource section because that was something I was particularly interested in and I thought, well, you know, I can propose some recommendations to the council maybe to address some of my concerns, but those recommendations would be implementation items. So, I thought, well, I'll look at the implementation section and see where I can make some suggestions. And I realized there wasn't an implementation section. And then I went back through and realized that a lot of the other the housing strategies that have been proposed that are nonregulatory, like landbaking, like partnerships, that would all be part of the implementation section if there was one. So those all need to be spelled out in each of those sections. Um I did submit some comments um regarding some of the um specific um recommendations for some of the maps that are in there, specifically groundwater. Um there is a groundwater map. The goals and policies really only talk about building constraints. Doesn't really have any policies on groundwater and um potential contamination water quality from brownfields from non-point solutions. So I think objectives should

be added for that. Um and there's no map in there um on scenic resources. There's a lot of objectives and text that talks about scenic resources, but the MCA specifically says those should be mapped. Um, so I would ask that you add u more goals on water quality, especially as it relates to the groundwater issue. Um, brownfield specifically, um, that could lead to some grant programs, the whole um, skyline trail that was, you know, planning for that $300,000 grant was because they put brownfields in their their plan and that EPA saw that and were awarded that grant. I know they did it because I did the plan and EPA specifically called me up and said the reason Callis Bell got this was because you were the only one where your plan had any information in there on brownfields. So put information on brownfields in there. Um and I already talked about the uh um covenants and restrictions. And I just like to say I'd like to thank planning board especially because they're all volunteers and I know how many hours they spent on this plan. Um, I'd like to thank them for their work and I also do appreciate the work that staff put into this because I know it is a big um lift. Um, but I still think there's some things that are missing and should be added. Thank you.

Thanks very much, Kate.

There Daniel Sitter with Housing Whitefish. I just want to start as the reminder that Whitefish is the least affordable city in the fastest growing county and the least affordable state in the country. Let that settle in. Um I think it's worth reminding ourselves that when we're having these conversations. Um so with that, I do appreciate the focus on housing across all the elements. Uh be it attainable, affordable, community housing, uh needed housing. I think it's um whatever we're calling it. Um it's important that we're having these conversations. Um one thing that we always kind of get back to is this idea of like how do we get affordable housing? Um what is affordable housing? And I think it's important to also just take a step back and we're we're part of a housing trap just systemically across our country. We want housing prices to be cheaper, but we don't want want our property values to go down, right? That that's like the main crux here. we want more housing, but we don't want our values to go down. Um, and so I think that's really at the crux of all of this. This isn't necessarily an issue that we're going to fix here, that part of it. Um, so I think it's just understanding like what is in our control. Um, and so I think in terms of looking at this, you know, some of the top down, again, stuff is only going to go so far. As I mentioned earlier, the um, you know, thinking big strategies obviously does work. Um, but I think we do need to have a lot of grassroots opportunities for people to make change in their own neighborhoods. Um, I really I know um I think a lot of incremental development there's oftent time this belief that it's not going to make a difference. And I think for me it's a it's a yes and it's not that's not the only solution, but we need to allow those people opportunities. We need to have the lot splits. We need to make it easy for people. Uh, and then partnerships. Um, absolutely. I think housing whitefish, we're here regardless of what is in this plan or what comes

out of it. Uh we will be here to help partner on solutions. Um I know all other nonprofit partners will be as well. Um and so I think just for us if we don't agree with something, you know that we'll be here to let you know. Um and I I guess my hope just generally for this conversation and the community moving forward is um that we can have more like hope and optimism around this plan. um and have some fun talking about it. Um it's been like I think when everybody's like vision 2045 like awesome, we get to talk about our community um it started really optimistic and I think over time it's just that's kind of died out. Um so I hope as we do get to the implementation we can start to have some conversations about like how can we actually do this and get people excited about actually engaging in the process. Um because it is fun to talk about your community and the things that we want to see. Um so I just hope that we can kind of continue to tap into that. Um, thank you.

Thanks, Daniel.

Hi, I'm Whitney Beckham, 427 Luper. Um, I just wanted to clarify from, you know, a public perspective, but then also having been at several of the commission and planning board meetings over the years, um, that from the beginning with the economic development section, there were grave concerns with the GSBS report. Some of those were mentioned, some of those were kind of tucked away and said, "We'll deal with that later." Sure. So from the very beginning when in June it was presented to us, it was what is what is this that Whitefish has been pasted and copied into? Um it was not a report specific to our community. So we had a lot of issues from the very beginning with that. And I just want to make clear that the version that you're seeing is a version that the board has voted three times to send to you now. So it's not something that was never seen by us and came to you from a third party. It's something that we have now three times said, "Yes, this is the version that represents what we want." So remember that. And also um we did add language uh actually recommended by Daniel Sitter that we consistently revisit the 14 required elements. So that's already in there. And um what else? I've been trying to take notes from that meeting and this meeting. Um no neighborhood will be exempt from change. That's something that from duplexes and ADUs is already happening. So change is imminent and let's embrace it, but let's also keep

character. Thank you. Thanks very much, Whitney. Further public comment this evening. Rhonda,

good evening. uh council and commissioners or council and mayor, sorry. Um I have only a few really brief things that came up during the work session and there wasn't time to comment on them then. Um the question was asked about the triplexes being added to the suburban neighborhoods. That came up very late in the meeting on Monday night. The public didn't see it. the people who live in those neighborhoods didn't know about it and it was just added at the end when everyone was very tired. Um those are otherwise single family um neighborhoods. They're a lot there a lot there's a lot of land and they do already now have to have duplexes and ADUs. So adding triplexes is I think pretty radical and it was an last minute thing. I think someone asked that. Um, I personally am concerned about the uh short-term rental issue. You know, um, when you saw the word cloud of what the problems are in Whitefish, the biggest one was affordability and the second one was short-term rentals. And in the land use plan, it has a paragraph saying that it is not recommended that you expand short-term rentals. Um, and then there's a whole page of how you could if you wanted to in case of special situations. And I think that that's very um inappropriate because we have the most short-term rentals in the county and the county has the most in the state. And this is not healthy. And there's a brand new Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research report out today that's an update of the one done in 2020. And it's pretty clear this is a huge problem in certain parts of the state, specifically Gallatin and Flathead counties and of course in Flathead County, we have the bulk of them in our zip code. So I think that that whole page about how you could

have more short-term rentals should just be stricken from the thing. And then my final uh comment that I want to make is regarding the heritage urban neighborhood um designation as heritage heritage urban and then change to heritage downtown and then change back to heritage urban and how that's a upzone or a down zone or whatever. And I just want to show you this is the 2007 growth policy and in it under land use the issue current zoning is often inconsistent with the existing character and densities of residential neighborhoods. And then it calls out that neighborhood. And then under recommended actions, number one, in order to protect and preserve the character, scale, and qualities of existing neighborhoods, the city of Whitefish shall revise the zoning jurisdiction regulations and adopt character-based standards and neighborhood conservation districts and on and on. So, this was a mistake. It was miszoned in the first place. There was a promise made to the neighborhood by the city to fix it and it has never been fixed and now it's being brought up as oh well that's zone WR4 so you know you have to live with it. It's like no it's wrong. It was a mistake. It was recognized and I really hope that you'll fix this mistake because that those heritage urban neighborhoods are the densest neighborhoods in the community because there are 25 foot lots. It's fully built out of historic homes. They're owner occupied primarily. There are some rentals. It's a stable, solid asset to our community, and it should not be

under the gun for some philosophy, especially when the city made a promise to the people who live there. Thank you. Thanks, Rhonda. Richard,

everybody doing all right? Honorable mayor and um members of council. I'm speaking on behalf Richard Hiller White um 104th Street White. Um speaking on behalf of myself and Flathead families for responsible growth. sincere um thanks to the planning commission staff and others who have put so much time, energy, and hard work into this plan. It has been tough. I know. Um the draft as presented is as we think for the most part up to the task of guiding uh the growth of um our community and we encourage you to move the plan forward. A concern, a general concern, however, is that future growth, particularly north of the vioideuct, and we've talked about this at some length in the past, must be dependent upon the ability of the city to provide adequate egress in the event of wildfire or other emergency evacuation. To do otherwise presents an unacceptable risk to human life. Please remember also that when it comes to affordable housing, and people have mentioned this several times this evening, density alone cannot meet the needs of the community. It's a much bigger task than that and it's going to take a lot of work to resolve it. I want to point out and thanks to Michelle to get the at the last minute my comments uh in hard copy to you on your uh on the DAS but uh I'll be very very specific on page 129 and 30 it states proper forest management and defensible space around properly constructed structures in close quote. Um, I want to remind you that defensible space equates to a 10-ft sideyard

setback and this should be recognized as a standard. And additionally, I'm not sure how properly constructed structures are defined. I think that that requires some further tweaking. Uh on page 148, uh depending upon the draft, which one you're looking at, um the uh transportation map identifies Wisconsin as a community street in one draft. Anyway, um which is characterized by on street parking, and I don't believe there's any on street parking on Wisconsin. Uh on page 134 underwater quality goal two, I would ask you to add objective S. Uh and it would read as follows. Work with Burlington Northern Santa Fe to eliminate contaminated runoff into the Whitefish River from untreated railard outfalls. Uh I was just out there alongside on Edgewood today and uh there are seven said outfalls just along Edgewood and there are more uh in the roundhouse area. Uh, and on page 144, I would suggest or hope you would include Reservoir Road, Tarmagan Village, and Lion Mountain and others um, Grouse Mountain 2. Uh, in the list of places that do not have adequate secondary uh, egress. Uh, that is a major uh, issue for us in the event of wildfire. Um, on page 207, what is meant by quote, "White fish has experienced a consistent reduction in naturally affordable housing stock across across both rental and ownership markets." I've brought this up before, but it's still there. What is naturally affordable?

Um and on page 217 um Montana land use um m lupa uh number five the housing strategy. I wonder uh when it talks about detached ADUs, would they be permitted uh if it encroaches into the home ignition zone or HIZ? Uh structure encroachment into the HIG HIS should be prohibited if we're to become a fire adapted community. It's just I won't go into the details, but you've heard them from me before. Um and finally on page 287 um talking about the uh in the facilities section um I think it's in facilities the question that I have is do we have sufficient water capacity in the event of a mega fire uh where multiple structures are involved uh or do we quickly move to evacuation and then recovery uh and Then in the facilities section, uh, whenever new a new roof is needed on a city-owned or leased facility such as the ice den, and that was just mentioned a little bit ago by Allen that the ice den needs a new roof. But, uh, such facilities such as the ice den, ocean, oonessy, wave, etc. Where feasible, it should be replaced in part or in entirely in its entirety uh, with a solar roof. Thank you.

Thanks, Richard. Mary Beth,

Mary Beth Moran, uh 604 Gettys, um as a resident of Whitefish really and someone who's lived many places who didn't have processes like this, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and I thanked all the people who have just taken leave a part of this and I just yeah I want to echo this none of this needs to be either or I mean the it's all how in the spirit of implementation as we go forward um and to offer a fresh perspective if I could have so many people participating on a habitat build site volunteering the way they've participated in this process it would be a really good day for habitat

thanks Mary Beth Paul

Paul McCann 340 Summers Avenue. Um I guess I I sent you a comment and it's in the packet. I see you have lots of comments, but it's uh one about the uh the east boundary of the downtown heritage zone. It it stops at uh uh Park Avenue now. And I and I never noticed it before, so I have to apologize. I have to bring it up to you instead of the planning commission before, but like Rebecca, my eyes were looking at that map and I still like, what does that say? Park Avenue, Pine Avenue. But anyway, it's a Park Avenue, which surprised me because our neighborhood, you know, the avenues and Park Avenue, you would think it would include all the way to Pine and it was a surprise. And uh I just realized that Saturday morning. So, I quickly uh printed out a few flyers, 40 of them to pass out to the neighbors on park and the side neighborhoods there. And I realized, wow, there's a lot of houses here. So, I had to go back to my printer, got another 45 pages and printed them out, put them out to the neighbors houses. Okay, now we're up to 85 and I still had houses to do. So, I guess it brought up the whole point is, wow, that is a dense neighborhood. It really surprised me. Thank you for taking a look at that.

Thanks, Paul. Further public comment this evening, Jim. Mayor Mofield, members of the council, city staff, just wanted to say, uh, Jim Williams, City Beach neighborhood here, um, north of the Videuct, thank you. I looked at the plan and I've been following it particularly the last six months more than prior, but I think you've done a good job. Give a shout out to Allen. You're never going to make everyone happy. I been there, tried that um in my last career in public processes, but really I think you've done a pretty good job at uh and I just, you know, having been in public processes, I I you know, listening to shelter whitefish, housing whitefish, younger generations than I, I learned a lot. I'm not a civil engineer. I'm a wildlife biologist, right? So, I learned a lot about housing and infill. So, it's kind of taken me to school. And those voices are very valid and equally as valid are homeowners like myself in a single family home. I feel like that's almost a bad thing sometimes, but um I appreciate your governance and considering all of your constituents, the people that want to be here, maybe the workforce, but also the people that were either born here, bought here, remodeled here, built here. um and the property taxes and school levies they pay because all voices are valid and I think you've done a good job at listening to everybody. And I think uh the gentleman before me mentioned kind of the a little hint of optimism is when we get to implementation, I think it'll be kind of fun to be creative on how to um look at architectural standards where maybe these new infield designs, enhance a neighborhood that was everyone was worried about change, you know, stuff like that. Again, that's way above my head, but I learned a lot. Just wanted to say thank you. It's a tough job. Um, you've had a long night, so I'll quit.

Thanks. Thanks, Jim. Appreciate it. Mary,

good evening again, Mary Flower Citizens for a Better Flathead. And you do have a one-page copy of our uh summary of our comments in your packet. But for the public process, I do want to um re reiterate some of that. Um I do hope that you saw the oped that we did in last week's pilot, I believe, where we noted that you've been asked to do the impossible. Uh the legislature has really done a disservice by stripping our local communities of the ability to really put in place, excuse me, tools that will generally help uh communities create affordable housing. And again, I challenge um shelter whitefish, housing white fish and other groups to come together now to look at how we go to the legislature and ask them to restore um the uh local planning that should be in your hands and not in the legislaturators. Um, having said that, I would also say that because your hands are so tied, you need to really look at the data. And I think you have had, while public may want retail everywhere, I think you had an excellent presentation tonight um, from a planner who has invested in the city for a long time. Um, and made our downtown successful. Um, I think it's really important you look at what is realistic and not just what everyone out of a poll perhaps wants. Um, the changes that were suggested to the economic chapter have been targeted as heart of white fish changes. We expressed a lot of concerns in that

issue in that chapter and they were incorporated by heart of white fish. she didn't need all of us doing it individually, but I we fully support the changes and the adoption by the um planning the commission to keep that chapter as is and I'd encourage you to do that. Uh I appreciate the fact that this isn't the final closing public comment and um that's wonderful and very necessary. Um we again urge you to adopt conservative growth targets. There's no need to at this stage to decide that we need all of the housing possible within the city. Let's go very slow at this point. You can come back to this growth policy next year and the following year if you think so, but we know, as has been said here, that simply allowing density is not going to solve our affordable housing pro process. And so we don't need to simply up those numbers. Um we urge you to prioritize ownership over high density. We think this uh rental over highdensity rental. We think this plan is overly um tilted towards rentals and needs to recognize that while we want young families to have that rental opportunity, we also want them to know that they can make this their forever home and have an ownership opportunity. Um, we urge you to protect our downtown core um and uh to remove the mixed use um or to keep it out of the plan because mixed use everywhere is going to harm our downtown. Um we want to really uh urge you to invest in infrastructure

and require that growth plays its own way. Um, strengthening concurrency policies to ensure this is really important. We don't know that they're strong enough in the plan right now. We must recognize that there are physical and environmental limits to how much transportation and infrastructure growth Whitefish can support. And this plan was supposed to give us the um factual basis to show what we could support. And I don't think it's done that. and we support the prioritizing active transportation. Um, again, we appreciate the fact that you've been given a very difficult task. I hope you too will be working at uh plans to go to the legislature and change this process because it's not been community friendly. Thank you.

Thanks, Mary. Further public comment this evening. Michelle and sir. Hi, my name is Gabriel Leighton. I live at I used to live at 514 Summers. I don't know my current address. I just rented a room with my buddy Tyler because it's 500 bucks and I'm just really happy that I got a room to live in right now. Uh I think it's park and park and fifth. Uh I grew up in Eureka, Montana, a really small town with limited options for earning. Uh a lot of my friends actually used to have to drive 45 minutes to Whitefish just to go paint houses or to run electrical. And I know some of my friends still come down 45 minutes. uh they'll park at the historical village and they drive 45 minutes to get here. I think as residents um I moved here and I think we all forget it is a small town and there's only so much housing that these guys can even build. You got a fire department, you got a water department. We only can do so much even with utilities. If you guys want to be here, just keep showing up. There's a quote in the helling bathroom, that you can't fail if you never give up. If we just keep showing up, you'll get to stay here. I can't guarantee you're going to get a house. I made 80k very luckily I got to work for Jim and Lisa Stack which is a freaking miracle because the way I met Jim Stack was I broke his window on the

vio on his car and I came down here and he was lucky enough to give me a chance to show up to work. That's all we can do guys. Other than that when I was in the building at Jim and Lisa Stacks place there's a guy named Kent Kent Jones. Everybody in this room is freaking exhausted and I can see it. We all look tired. Uh, one of the most helpful things that got me through this last year was Kent Jones comment about having fun. No matter what we're going to do here, we're all going to go to work tomorrow morning. You're all going to come home exhausted. If you guys can go to work and try and have fun through it and just keep showing up one more day, we get to stay. It doesn't matter for how long. If you want to be here, you'll find a way. Don't get beat down. Just keep showing up. Try and have fun. Just try and have fun, guys. Like, it saved my life this year. I even walked away from the job from Jim and Lee because it's pretty stressful. With money comes stress. It's just part of it. Get out of bed tomorrow morning. Wake up, look yourself in the mirror, and tell yourself you're going to have a good day and try and have fun. Clock in, clock out, and keep doing it. And try to realize that the housing's not going to get built. It's okay. We can only build so much at once and it can only be approved. You're gonna have to drive 30 minutes some days. I took three buses in the city. Like I used to get up at 4:30 in the morning and take three buses

from 5:00 a.m. to get three buses away at 6:25 a.m. to wait 40 minutes for a lawn care guy to pick me up. And I'd cut grass from 7:01 7:01 a.m. and you cut all day and you rack as many houses as you could so you could do a landscape job on a Friday. If you want to be here, just keep pushing and the housing will come. Everything you've desired has ever happened. I promise you that. If you want a house and you want to live here, it'll happen. You just don't get to choose when. You have to want it and you have to show up for it. Try to have fun. That's all you guys can do is try to have fun through this stuff. That's it.

Thanks, Gabriel. Appreciate your comments. Don't let it break your spirit. This town is trying to break our spirit. Just don't let it do it. Further public comment this evening. Michelle, anyone online? Uh, we do. Uh, Isabelle, if you would like to um unmute your mic and state your name and address for us, please.

Oh, hold on. As hold on, Bella, we can't quite hear you. Oh. Oh, there we go. Okay.

I don't know how that helped, but um hi, I'm Isabella Brown. I'm at 104 Colorado. Um, I just wanted to shout out Valerie and Keegan and Nathan and just like, um, thank you for your work for highlighting the people who live and work here and the complexity of this plan. Um, and just wanted to uplift that people are leaving because housing is too expensive. Our city can't afford to ignore it. And I really am Gabriel trying to live, laugh, love here, but current conditions are making it really hard. Um, ignoring this issue pushes residents outward. um the increase of sprawl, restraint on infrastructure, rising costs, and just worsened emissions um by our polic like driven by our policy. planning for housing today like protects our community um in ways that like I guess the economic development chapter has been really frustrating along with like the the idea that there's 14th growth policy elements and since we have six out of six out of 14 of them like we should just be content like I I guess I just don't understand why we can't achieve all of them. we're we're not like and just not settle for hitting just like a handful. Um why be content with something with becoming a wealthy suburb of Calisville when we have the opportunity to create like a vibrant inclusive neighborhood, a resilient community really. Um taking action now even in small deliberate steps um little baby steps ensure that the missing middle housing neighborhood centers and walkable communities benefit the people who live here today. um as well as tomorrow I think is the biggest part of that is even modest actions towards these goals are the bare minimum and but they'll make a real difference respectfully. Um, some have suggested putting this responsibility back to the state or legislature and I just honestly the city has shown it doesn't want growth on its own terms. So, the council must step up.

Um, planning responsible for responsible infill uh downtown general density and neighborhood housing isn't optional. It's the city's fidicial like or fidiciary um duty to residents. So I just I don't like the BL the draft plan as it is as it relies on a lot a few lots for most of the growth. It downzones in other areas. It limits gentle density and mix you o mixed use opportunities. Missing middle housing types like triplexes and quadplexes should be allowed across neighborhoods while still leaving the final decision to the property owner. If some if someone's willing to add housing responsibility responsibly on their property, why wouldn't the city provide that opportunity? Including the deed restrictions and affordable incentives on residential units above retail and supporting locally owned businesses instead of high rent tourist chains um would strengthen neighborhood ensure growth benefits to residents. uh the the cons other consultants, the CBEZ or whatever, they said that um neighborhood center neighborhood centers won't compete with the downtown. Um to say that there's not an like a want for it is just completely rejecting any data. Um and it's concerning that 76% of our workforce commutes to Whitefish but doesn't live here. Um and we're not even tracking them in this plan. full-time residents, um, youth, families facing housing insecurities deserve priorities in shaping policies. Um, surveys from Shelter White Fish and Livable Flathead show strong support for missing middle housing, um, and walkable communities and neighborhood centers. 66% of voters agree that neighborhood character is a privilege, showing responsible growth is possible while preserving what makes White Fish is unique, which from their survey, it sounds like the people in the community. So the current zoning approach um I I I heard somebody say um the conservative growth planning philos philosophy and the current zoning approaches reflects like a historical

planning best move mindset. So I don't understand why we that would even be a question of which one we should listen to. In many ways, it feels like a step backwards, a regression of um and instead of forwardlooking data-driven plans um that meets the needs of the residents, we're talking about annexing farmland up in about 30 seconds, please.

Okay. Um thoughtful info. Downtown gentle density incentives for affordable housing prove we can expand responsibly with meeting climate goals. planning for housing community needs while uh creating connected water walkable neighborhoods ensure white fish remains vibrant, affordable and sustainable. Um it's about supporting the people white fish in the community we love. Fear of change should not hold us back from doing the right thing and um also try city transportation. That's it. Okay. Thanks Isabelle. Thanks for joining us tonight. Anyone else online, Michelle? Um anybody else who would like to speak, please raise your hand. We're good.

Thank you very much. I'm going to go ahead and hold the public hearing open to the March 23rd meeting as well as the April 6, 2026 meeting where we will also hold a work session and I would turn it back to the council for discussion or a motion to that effect. Again, keeping the public hearing open. Steve make a motion to keep the public hearing open to the March 23rd meeting and if necessary to the April 7th May 6th meeting. Thanks Steve. Is there a second?

Seconded by councelor Kalabiano. Further discussion. All those in favor please raise your hand and those opposed like son and that motion does carry unanimously. We're going to go ahead and take about a fivem minute break. Thanks everyone for coming. A long that was a long set. Yeah.

And this will be phase one. I'll turn it over to Craig Workman, our public works director. Thanks, Craig. Thank you. I think um so good evening, mayor and council. This is going to be kind of a uh Mario and Dreddy staff report. I thought for sure with the previous public hearing, we'd be after 10 p.m., but um I think everybody knows that we've been working on additional water storage on the south side of town for nearly a decade. Um this added storage will allow the city to meet fireflow demands required from DEEQ. AE2s was hired uh as the city's consultant for this proposal back in 2017. In the first phase of the project included an update to our water distribution model, review of existing system components, current and projected daily demands, and system improvement requirements. Once this phase was completed, the model was updated and calibrated. The next phase of the project was preliminary storage tank sizing and site location, which was completed last year. Uh we then completed a preliminary engineering report which council approved in May of 2025. Uh the plan calls for 1 million gallon elevated storage tank at the city shop on 18th Street. Um which again you guys approved on May 19th, 2025. Final plans were committed uh committed. Wow. Uh completed in January and the project was advertised for bid on January 11th and January 18th. Uh we opened bids last month on the 11th and received uh four bids. Uh the bid tab is included in your packet. Uh the low bid is landmark structures for $6.6,632,000. Um I'll note that this is $132,000 over our estimate. Uh which comes in about

2%. Uh the estimate was 6.5 million. Uh so this project will be funded through the state revolving fund uh with an anticipated principal forgiveness of $1 million. Uh we're expecting final approval of that funding this week. Uh so per the attached recommendation from AE2S and the recommendation of staff, we respectfully request that you award the bid for the 1 milliongalon composite elevated tank to landmark structures for 6,632,000 subject to SRF funding approval. Thank you, Craig. Any questions for our public works director? Uh Ben,

just one just for posterity. Could you recap for us where the funding for this project would be coming from? Um yeah, it'll be coming from the SRF fund from the state revolving fund. Yeah, with some cash. I can't remember. Do you remember the exact loan amount, Dana or Laney?

Let me pull it up real quick. Um, so we will be utilizing um some impact fee funds for this project. Um, close to a million dollars I would say of impact fee funds and then the remaining will be covered under uh the SRF loan program. Phase two, which you will see at your next council meeting, will be cash funded by the city through impact fees and cash reserves. Jeppi, Mr. Mayor, I move to approve the uh award uh to award the bid for the 1 million gallon composite elevated tank to the landmark structures for 6.632 uh,000.

Thank you, Jeppi. Is there a second? Seconded by councelor Fury. Further discussion. Just go ahead. I just had a quick question actually. So, um, so Craig, this is just the tower though. This is just the tower, correct? Tower. Okay. The number was like a lot larger. So, yeah, there's three phases to this project. Um, this is phase one. Phase two, which you'll see in a couple weeks, uh, will be the water man coming up 18th Street. And then there's a third phase, which will be water main connecting on Spokane from where we finished, uh, or started a couple years ago, connecting to that new water man with a with a booster station.

Okay. Yeah. I just wanted everybody to be clear on that. All in more money than that. We're talking about probably 18 to20 million total. Okay. Thank you. Sorry, Jeppi. All those in favor of the motion, please raise your hand. Those opposed, like sign on. That motion does carry unanimously. Thanks, Craig. Uh, you have enclosed in your packet Dana's report. Any questions for our city manager? Just a comment. I think we should increase that health insurance premium at least 15%. No thanks. Um, yeah, health insurance will be a challenge with this year's budget as usual.

Further questions? Not seeing any. Dana, anything additional to report on? Not this evening. Thanks very much. We will move on to communications from the city council. Who would like to begin this evening? How about Jeppi? Uh, no, no comments tonight. Thank you. Thanks very much, Steve.

Uh, just one comment if anybody's interested in uh getting to meet the candidates for Montana House District 1. Uh, the Democratic candidates from in the primary. Uh, there will be a round table Monday, 7 p.m. at the pack. Uh, where you'll be able to come in. It's free. You can answer, you can ask questions. It's going to be a round table, not a debate. and I'll be one of the um one of the hosts of that. Thanks, Steve. Frank,

I just want to say thanks to all that uh finally pushed this um community plan to our desks. Um it's it's important. Um it's and so I I I appreciate the angst that it's generated and the work that it's generated, but I want to thank everybody that's been involved. So, thanks. Thank you, Frank. Ben,

um, I wanted to start off by acknowledging there's a letter that arrived in my inbox from MDT. Anybody hadn't seen it yet, it's in the physical inbox. And it it uh it it responds to our letter which requested um improvements at the intersection of 13th Street and Baker or 13th Street and US 93. Clear which one. Um, and so in any event, um, Craig, I just wanted to ask if maybe you had any like response to this or does this surprise you to see this letter? Uh, they basically said, "No, we're not going to do anything." Is how I read it. I am not surprised.

Yeah,

I think it's pretty much par for the course what we've seen, you know, over the last decade or so. Uh they're so Bob Vosen has retired and they're working with an interim um administrator. So my guess is he's probably not committing to much um and so we could, you know, once once there's a new permanent district administrator, I I think what we need to do is set up a meeting with that person um and just get him or her up to speed on, you know, the challenges that we have in Whitefish. And my guess is it will be an internal hire that will hopefully be familiar. Um so we won't be starting from ground zero, but um no, I don't think there's much of a response. It's sort of what we expected.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. Um I wanted to extend a special thanks to the planning board and to Allen specifically. Um, I've said this before, but if anybody thought that this process of doing the growth policy was going to be easy, they're crazy and they don't know what White Fish is like. It was always going to be hard. And um, I think m perhaps the council will tune some things up or not, but I think what's delivered to us here is is solid work product. Um, I know it took tremendous effort and controversy and um, I know that's not easy. So, I think we all need to express our thanks to the to the members of the planning board who stuck through this through late nights and long meetings to staff that's done the same. Um, and to Allan who has uh one of the hardest, if not the hardest job in the city of Whitefish um in the last couple years um of everybody yelling at him about everything. So, um so anyway, I I appreciate um all the work that's been put into it. I'm looking forward to this discussion. Um I just wanted to give you guys a little pre how I've been thinking about it. I um I've been watching this process pretty closely. Um I've watched most of the planning board meetings. Um I've reading all the comment. Um I really appreciate hearing from everybody tonight and I know we'll hear some more and I'll read some more. Um I have been keeping a list together of um I'm going to call them suggestions or edits that I might suggest when the time comes. Um I'm not done with that list right now. It is approximately 20 items and I'm trying very hard not to um get in the weeds but to keep things on on a high level and that I believe are important. Um and I say that because um I don't know just when we go through this process I'm going to I hope I I don't want to dominate time. I I know everybody's going to have other edits too. Um but I'm going to try to come with with text uh sort of um rather than

trying to craft the text here in the meeting. I was going to try to bring some with me. Um I even might run my ideas by staff before I bring them here as well. Um just to weed out any bad ideas before we get to the meeting. Um but any event, I I think um most of it I would suspect is non-objection quite frankly to most most folks here. Just just ideas to make it better really. So um any event, that's what I was going to do. Um I just wanted to let you guys know that ahead of time. I don't know what process we follow, but and I'm sure other people have ideas too. So thanks. Thank you, Ben. Rebecca,

um, yep. Just a couple things. Um, I was wondering if we could follow up with the Flathead County Health Department. Our our rep, I think, is Grant and, um, that is a little disturbing that because we still do have septic systems in the city and we might have people building occasionally um, uh, using them because I think that is an option still, isn't it, Craig? people can still use a septic system versus hooking up to sewer.

Uh the health department has some very strict requirements if if sewer is within 200 feet of the property. Uh but uh if sewer is directly adjacent to the property, then they won't get a septic permit. Okay. Do you think we're at risk by not speaking out at this time since Mary was pretty telling us we're going backwards after? Yeah, I mean it's it's kind of out of our hands because we don't regulate septic systems in my opinion. Oh. Oh, I see what you're saying. It's regulated by the county.

Okay. All right. The only Rebecca, the only way that we would be able to address it right now is if the city council wrote a letter to the county commissioners before they take action on that recommendation. And would I ask the mayor to do that or would I ask the city manager to do that? You would have to get four uh person agreement and make sure you articulate what you'd like us to write and we can do. So, anybody else worried about it? I'm very worried about it, but I don't think a letter is going to move the needle at all with the commissioners. I don't think I know about it. Andy,

I would have to agree. I don't think a letter from us is going to make any difference. And while we could send it and be on record and feel good about ourselves for that, in terms of making a change and what policy will ultimately be, it won't matter. Okay. All right. Well, go on the record and say it would have been nice, but I I see what you're saying. Um, on that topic, Rebecca, sorry to interrupt you. Um, I'm happy to request that our committee member come and present the rationale for their vote and um discuss that with you if you'd like. They are your representative on that health board. Yeah, I'd like to hear what he has to say. Okay,

I can do so. Okay. The second thing is um there's a member in the audience that was worried about the ashanessy I think and so I just w wondered if Angie could tell the public and us you you wrote a letter and I just wondered if you wanted to comment on that. Yeah, we're working on it. That's about what I can tell you. That's for the cleanup of the Piccolo building.

Correct. Right. The other thing is um so we're moving forward with the snow lot the RF. No, we're not moving forward with doing anything on this snow lot. No, that um we you know we had planned to uh bring that forward in March. Um we're just learning a little bit more about where we are in the process for example with the architects and compass design. Um, and so now we're having to figure out how we can work that into the RFP process and how what that partnership might look like with future respondents to the RFP. But we are still working on a um RFP draft for council to review at some point. But it's um always one thing after another it would appear that we're trying to address um for that project. So um have a meeting hopefully scheduled next week to meet with Encompass Design.

Okay. Thank you. And um just wanted to extend thanks again to the planning commission. Half of them are in the audience at this late time. Um and Alen in particular and Dave. Um it's been an incredible push and heavy lift. Um I I just I think it's amazing that we come from a town where people care so much. So I'll look forward to the discussion in the future. Thank you. Thanks, Rebecca. Andy,

I too need to say thanks to you guys. I mean, it's been hard, I know, and it's not easy, especially to Allen, particularly to all staff who've had to listen to every presentation about 18 times now. So, and you guys every time. And it's like because I've heard enough of them enough times and I it's like, okay, well, I could probably recite that at this point, but uh thank you. I know it's hard. Um it's we're not done yet, obviously. And as Ben said, he has things that he'd like to see added or changed or improved or enhanced possibly. And I think we'll probably all have some of that. Um, if we can get that circulated a little before the night of the meeting, I think that would probably be better. It might be thoughtprovoking for everybody. Obviously, if it goes out on our city email, then it is public record, but I think it would be good if we could do some of that. That might help spur all of us just a little bit towards a towards the finish line. Um, I do know and I like the one line in CZB's land use element. It will not produce consensus. I'm perfectly comfortable with that. Not everyone's going to walk out of here happy. But I think that what the planning commission has done and what staff has done is they've delivered us a document that, as you say, it's a good work product and I think that it will serve this community. And we're going to have to make some changes now and we'll make changes in the future. I trust. But we can't words smmith it to death and we can't we've probably already done more of that than we should have. Quite frankly, I think it's a little my own personal opinion on the document. It's a little more detailed than we probably set out for, but that's fine because there's a lot of input out there and but ultimately I think that it will work for us. So, thank you everyone.

Thanks Andy. Um I'll just wrap up here. Just a reminder, we will be holding the March 23rd meeting, Dana. We are cancelling the work session, correct? So, you'll be cancelling the work session on March 16th, but that will be moved to March 23rd. Okay.

So, you will hold a work session March 23rd starting at 5:30. You'll go into your regular meeting at 710 to continue your public hearing on the community plan on um then you have the option at the end of that meeting to continue the public hearing to April 6th. We will notice the 23rd as the um a continuation of the public hearing for March 16th. We just need a quorum here. We're going to start that at 5:30 on the 16th so that since there is no work session and then we'll get you in and out. Um we just have one agenda item for that meeting. Um do we do consent agenda too?

We I mean we could probably do the consent agenda, just the minutes is what we'll have and then the um one item for that March 16th meeting as long as we have a quorum.

Okay. Um I assume we will have a quorum. I know Steve's kind of up in the air. I I may be depending on how the tournament goes. But in the event that I am not here, Ben, would you mind chairing the meeting just in case Steve also doesn't make it? Um, and I can certainly call in for that meeting as needed. And to Ben's point, um, you make a very good one. Let's follow Ben's lead. And I think April 6 is going to be an important work session for the council to basically dive in and have a focused work session on the growth policy. And I like Andy's idea about providing comments to Michelle in advance of the meeting. And I'm just guessing that if we have comments to you as a council by March 31st, would that give you enough time to incorporate and publish in the packet?

It's a Tuesday, I believe. So March 31st or yes, March 31st will be the deadline for the April 6 packet. Correct. Um hopefully you'll be able to give us your comments on the 23rd. That would be more ideal so that we have, you know, some bigger policy changes. You know, maybe some minor things that you want to fix on the 6th. But if we can get through on the 23rd, Ben's 20 items or who everybody's items, that would be ideal because then we'd have a clean copy for you to adopt on April 6. So ideally, as a group, you've made um and given us direction for um the changes that you want to see at that March 23rd meeting.

Perfect. All right. Just to make sure I fully understand or is it requested that we would send our proposed changes ahead of time for public comment? Is that the idea here? I think Andy suggested that just so we can all digest each other's thoughts. Okay. Yeah. I just think it' be a little thoughtprovoking for everybody and we kind of would have a little bit better feel for what we're going to be dealing with that night rather than trying to wrestle through if you have if you have 20 and Rebecca has 10 and Steve has 15 and Yeah. Yeah. We debate each one of those piece by piece. We're gonna not get done till June, right? You know, so that's my concern.

Okay. And our concern is that we did direct the planning commission not to provide comments ahead of time because you still have the public hearing open. And so it looks preddecisional um if you're sending in your recommended comments um prior to the public hearing being closed. Um so I do issue caution and I'll let Angie speak to that. That was the direction we gave them. So, while I understand there's efficiencies in that, you are more than welcome to provide them to staff to review and we can work with each of you to say like, yeah, this is a good thing, this is a bad thing. Yeah, we've seen this with other counselors. Um, but putting it in the packet ahead of time is not recommended.

Yeah, I agree completely with Dana. does look and we did direct planning board to our planning commission now to stop doing that because it does I mean you guys have because the public hearing is still open under M loopa you have you know the duty to consider and address public um public you know comment so definitely if you want to get your thoughts in order I totally encourage that but um those thoughts should be presented at a public meeting so um but the way the schedule is set we On the 23rd, we're going to bring our our motions forward, but the public hearing is going to be continued through April 6th. So, no matter what. Right. Oh, we Okay.

So, that's if you decide to not close public comment on the 23rd. The motion The motion was, if necessary, April 6th. So, if we don't close the public comment on the 23rd, then it would be held open until the 6th. Correct. I stand corrected. Further comments from the council. We are ajourned. Thanks very much.